


Strawberry Lemonade

by utsu



Series: Between the Trees [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 16:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11581824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: InoSaku Prompt: Do you ever think if people heard our conversations they’d lock us up?





	Strawberry Lemonade

“Pink, I think,” Sakura says, and smiles when Ino turns to her with a smirk of her own.

“Of course, Forehead,” Ino says, leaning over Sakura’s legs and picking the very shade of nail polish she’d seen Sakura eyeing just before. She unscrews the lid with a certain kind of methodical efficiency that Sakura appreciates. She runs a hand idly down the delicate slope of Sakura’s leg until her fingers rest on the crest of her ankle. She paints diligently, with the same kind of intense focus she uses to sift through an enemy’s brains, but with far less the cruelty.

“So,” she says, and Sakura watches the way her hair shifts, molten silver, sunlight through flame, as she turns over her shoulder to catch Sakura’s wayward gaze. It takes Sakura’s breath away, so easily, so prettily.

“Are we still going to train this weekend?”

Sakura manages to tear her eyes away from the flickering pulse of Ino’s throat, and even goes so far as to heave a fairly believable sigh.

“It’ll ruin my nails,” she explains, and definitely doesn’t _pout_. “And you worked so hard.”

Ino snorts, the movement doing nothing to detract from her nearly clinical precision with the polish brush. Sakura marvels over this, and the steadiness of Ino’s wrist, and the faint trace of a leftover bruise healing there, murky and latent.

“I can always redo them,” she says, and flicks her hair over her shoulder. The fingertips she has pressed against Sakura’s ankle tighten slightly, until they’re just this side of painful. “And I could use the training.”

Sakura doesn’t react noticeably, but her posture sharpens, shoulders lifting from slopes to barbs, jaw clenching.

“Oh?” she leads, and Ino follows seamlessly, without even looking up from her work.

She shrugs, almost carelessly, and says, “Suffice to say that the walk back up to sunlight felt a lot longer than usual.”

Sakura’s eyes jump from feature to feature, looking past the beauty of Ino’s elegance, the smooth curves of her bone structure, the lush swell of her lips, and finds exhaustion and frustration tied into the strain of her eyes, and the wrinkles beneath. Sometimes she forgets about this—that Ino is more than her sharp mouth and her quick wit, her playful smiles and the confidence laden in every gesture. Sometimes Sakura forgets she’s human, too.

But it’s there, in the weakness of her skin, the telltale signs of struggle.

“Is Ibiki-san being an asshole again?” Sakura asks, brows dipping into a frown. “I’ll knock him into _Suna_.”

Ino keeps her focus on Sakura’s toenails.

“Yes,” she says, “but he’s right to be. I fucked up.”

Sakura reassess the situation, understanding immediately that this isn’t something trivial or petty, that Ino only admits to doing wrong when it’s _real_ , when it _matters_. She purses her lips, watching for any other noticeable sign of discomfort in the curves and lines of Ino’s face, in the steep cliffs of her shoulders, but she is as pristine as a crystalline morning. Sakura finds nothing but focus.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She finally asks, and Ino takes a long moment to breathe. When she glances back up at Sakura, there’s admiration pebbled in the darker ridges of her sea foam eyes, and determination in every exhausted line of her face.

“Soon,” she says, so quietly Sakura’s heart leaps in anticipation of—something. “But not yet.”

“Okay,” Sakura says smoothly, effortlessly. “Well, then we should probably address the _other_ thing.”

“Hm?” Ino hums, quirking her head. It’s such a simple gesture, habit more than anything else, but it makes Sakura’s heart race nonetheless.

“I may or may not have threatened to break someone’s something,” Sakura begins, glancing down at her cuticles. “And it may or may not have been in front of the council.”

Ino smirks, a single delicate brow rising curiously.

“Would this someone,” she says, “happen to have been the Hokage?”

Sakura chews on her lower lip for only a moment, as though truly needing to consider the question.

“Perhaps,” she admits, and Ino’s earlier withheld laugh bubbles to the surface; wind chimes and sunshine, spilling through the air.

“Repercussions?” Ino inquires, but Sakura is already shaking her head. She very nearly rolls her eyes.

“Naruto fell through the ceiling before they could get a word out.”

“Of course he did,” Ino sighs, and bends over slightly to blow air over Sakura’s freshly painted nails. She caps the brush and seals it, before leaning over Sakura’s legs to carefully settle the polish on the edge.

“There’s a possibility,” Sakura says, when Ino sits fully back into the cushions, hands still resting on Sakura’s shins, idly massaging. “That he limped out of the room, afterwards.”

Ino throws her head back and laughs, fingers squeezing, and when she glances back to Sakura her eyes are bright the way Sakura craves—with affection and joy and her usual carefree indulgence. All signs of tension dissipated, and she grins heartily when she says, “Must’ve been _some_ fall.”

This makes Sakura’s smirk grow into something greater, and far more vindictive. She traces the bow of her lower lip with a fingernail, soft on soft, and flicks her gaze carelessly to the shelves around Ino’s living room. Each of them holds multiple plants and flowers, and a beautiful display of succulents by the screen door leading to the tiny veranda. It’s comfortable, Sakura thinks, not for the first time.

It’s like home.

“Ah, well,” she sighs, “It’s getting close to time for you to head back, huh?”

Sakura permits the silence that follows for only a moment, before she turns back to Ino with curiosity in the lift of her brows. When she finds Ino’s cheeks splashes of delicate pink, the surprise has her mouth actually falling open.

“Speaking of things that may or may not have been said and done,” Ino says, “I’ve been given a vacation. Early.”

Sakura gives it a moment, then echoes, “A vacation.”

“A vacation,” Ino nods, lifting a hand to run her fingers through her hair, fluffing the tail of it up and over the back of the couch. “And a cute little note to go with it. I’m planning on framing it.”

“You would,” Sakura snorts, understanding perfectly what Ino isn’t saying. “Is it a short vacation?”

“Might be a little longer than expected,” she admits, looking utterly unaffected, even as she goes on to explain, “I think Ibiki said the remodeling would take about a month. It was only one cell.”

“Oh,” Sakura says, flapping her hand carelessly. “That’s nothing.”

“Right?” Ino gasps, sitting up and grinning, fingers giving another gentle comforting squeeze. Sakura feels chills race down her spine, and wonders if Ino can tell. “I don’t even know why I was the one given the vacation. I didn’t touch a thing.”

Sakura gives her a _look_ , pointed and amused, and Ino’s amusement bursts through in peals of laughter. Sakura can’t help but picture the damage done—not at Ino’s fingertips, never at her fingertips, not with _her_ specialty—and knows that only Ibiki could’ve really found the true culprit. Ino has a _particular_ kind of devious forte, one that enables her to work smoothly and efficiently in broad daylight, while never actually being _seen_ for what she is.

Sakura feels, for just a moment, a little bit of sympathy for whoever’s brain Ino had vacationed in for long enough to destroy some infrastructure; simply in a fit of temper; opposed to something of Ibiki’s teachings.

“I could use a vacation myself,” Sakura muses suddenly, easily pushing aside her earlier thoughts. “I’m not the only scary thing making rounds in the hospital, as of late.”

“Mm,” Ino hums wonderingly, lifting a hand to stroke seriously at her chin.

Sakura doesn’t make her guess, even though it would be fun to watch her struggle a bit, with so little information given. “Rumors,” she explains, and Ino’s eyes light up like sunrise, bright and molten. Rumors, Sakura knows all too well, are another of Ino’s specialties.

“Rumors,” she goads, desperate for more information. Sakura abides.

She flips her hair, saying, “About me, of course.”

“Ooh!”

Sakura hums agreeably, the corner of her mouth twitching up into a smirk. She rolls her eyes, quickly changing tactics from confident to exasperated, and breathes out a hefty sigh, as though she’s entirely too put-upon.

“They scare so easily,” she complains, “I don’t even have to lift a finger before they’re running off, whispering to each other.”

“Sounds familiar,” Ino grins, and her smile is a warning and a treat. It should put Sakura on edge, straighten her spine and sharpen her senses.

Instead, it draws her in, soothing and familiar, and she bends forward with clear intent written in the gleam of her eyes. Ino tilts towards her unconsciously, perceptive as always, and allows Sakura’s lips to press delicately to the corner of her mouth. She presses once, then twice, lifting a hand to press her fingertips against Ino’s jaw. She pulls back slightly, can’t help the smile spilling over the corners of her lips, and says, “We’re truly two of a kind.”

“Totally,” Ino agrees, and her eyes flash with amusement, even as her cheeks flash delicate pink. Ino, so confident in speech and action, blushes crimson when showed any sort of genuine doting affection. It’s something that never fails to charm Sakura, moving her heart in ways she’d never even imagined possible. Ino doesn’t touch many people, not physically, not ever. She moves through words and mind, with both allies and enemies, respectively. She does not allow anything but insubstantial connections to form, and always without proof of her presence.

But with Sakura, she makes contact—she _touches_.

Her hands on Sakura’s shins feel molten with heat and focus, fingers idly moving, and Sakura’s heart responds to every flickering touch of them. She feels loose and relaxed in Ino’s arms, under her hands—and how bizarre, she thinks, how incredibly, wonderfully bizarre that she is the only person in the world Ino dares to touch—Ino’s sought-after fingertips, pressed greedily all over her skin.

That Sakura is Ino’s favorite crime scene; the one she revisits, the one she leaves traces of herself behind with, so purposefully.

That Sakura is Ino’s only lasting evidence of connection.

“Hey Pig,” Sakura muses quietly, and moves under Ino’s hands. She slides her feet away from Ino’s soothing fingertips, moving her legs off the couch until her hip presses against Ino’s, and she can rest her head on her shoulder, in the crutch of her delicate neck, heated and comforting.

“Mm?”

“Do you ever think if people heard our conversations,” she starts, and a smile grows gradually over her expression, eyes falling heavily; oh, so, content. “They’d lock us up?”

Ino laughs, right up and against Sakura’s chest, and turns until her lips press into the tussle of Sakura’s hair. Her hand comes around Sakura’s shoulders, fingertips playing idly over her collarbone; her voice is husky, pitched low and dangerous when she says:

“They could try, Forehead. They could certainly try.”


End file.
